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Polyacrylic Acid as a Lubricant and a Complement to 1,2,4-Triazole for Copper Chemical Mechanical Polishing

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Abstract

Chemical mechanical polishing (CMP) has been used to achieve local and global planarization for fabricating copper interconnects. Corrosion inhibitors in slurries are critical to realizing planarization. This study used polyacrylic acid (PAA) as a lubricant and a complement to 1,2,4-triazole for copper CMP. It is revealed that in the presence of a primary corrosion inhibitor of 1,2,4-triazole, adding a relatively low content of PAA can lead to an ultra-smooth copper surface with 1 nm surface roughness Sa, which is conducive to planarization. A relatively uniform surface film of approximately 1.9 nm is formed. The surface film mainly contains Cu–PAA, Cu-1,2,4-triazole, and copper oxides. Moreover, microscopic atomic force microscopy experiments in liquid were conducted to simulate CMP. After adding PAA, the interfacial friction between the probe and the copper surface significantly decreases to 27%, indicating that the adsorbed PAA can serve as an effective lubricant, presumably due to electrostatic repulsion. In addition, after adding PAA to the 1,2,4-triazole solution, the surface film becomes thicker and denser, suggesting that PAA can complement 1,2,4-triazole to construct a relatively compact passivating film. Therefore, the copper surface quality improves. The findings provide mechanistic insight into the unrecognized role of polymers in copper CMP.

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Acknowledgements

The authors are grateful for the financial support by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (51975488 and 51991373), National Key R&D Program of China (2020YFA0711001), and Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities (2682021CG011). Furthermore, we would like to thank the Analytical & Testing Center of Sichuan University for XPS work and we would be grateful to Shuguang Yan for his help of XPS analysis.

Funding

Funding was provided by National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant nos. 51975488, 51991373), National Key Research and Development Program of China (Grant no. 2020YFA0711001), Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities (Grant no. 2682021CG011).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Tribology Research Institute, State Key Laboratory of Traction Power, Southwest Jiaotong University, Chengdu, 610031, China

    Liang Jiang, Qiuyu Li, Yushan Chen, Yuan Wu, Mao Sun & Linmao Qian

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  1. Liang Jiang
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Contributions

LJ: Conceptualization, Formal analysis, Funding acquisition, Resources, Writing—original draft, Writing—review and editing. QL: Formal analysis, Investigation, Writing—original draft. YC: Formal analysis, Investigation. YW: Investigation. MS: Investigation. LQ: Funding acquisition, Resources.

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Correspondence to Liang Jiang.

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Jiang, L., Li, Q., Chen, Y. et al. Polyacrylic Acid as a Lubricant and a Complement to 1,2,4-Triazole for Copper Chemical Mechanical Polishing. Tribol Lett 71, 62 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11249-023-01732-5

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